Modern Jewish History:
Tacitus on the Jews

(c. 110 CE)

Some say that the Jews were fugitives from the island of
Crete, who settled on the nearest coast of Africa about the time when
Saturn was driven from his throne by the power of Jupiter. Evidence of this
is sought in the name. There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida; the
neighboring tribe, the Idaei, came to be called Judaei by a barbarous
lengthening of the national name. Others assert that in the reign of Isis
the overflowing population of Egypt, led by Hierosolymus and Judas,
discharged itself into the neighboring countries. Many, again, say that
they were a race of Ethiopian origin, who in the time of king Cepheus were
driven by fear and hatred of their neighbors to seek a new dwelling-place.
Others describe them as an Assyrian horde who, not having sufficient
territory, took possession of part of Egypt, and founded cities of their
own in what is called the Hebrew country, lying on the borders of Syria.
Others, again, assign a very distinguished origin to the Jews, alleging
that they were the Solymi, a nation celebrated in the poems of Homer, who
called the city which they founded Hierosolyma after their own name. Most
writers, however, agree in stating that once a disease, which horribly
disfigured the body, broke out over Egypt; that king Bocchoris, seeking a
remedy, consulted the oracle of Hammon, and was bidden to cleanse his
realm, and to convey into some foreign land this race detested by the gods.

The people, who had been collected after diligent
search, finding themselves left in a desert, sat for the most part in a
stupor of grief, till one of the exiles, Moses by name, warned them not to
look for any relief from God or man, forsaken as they were of both, but to
trust to themselves, taking for their heaven-sent leader that man who
should first help them to be quit of their present misery. They agreed, and
in utter ignorance began to advance at random. Nothing, however, distressed
them so much as the scarcity of water, and they had sunk ready to perish in
all directions over the plain, when a herd of wild asses was seen to retire
from their pasture to a rock shaded by trees. Moses followed them, and,
guided by the appearance of a grassy spot, discovered an abundant spring of
water. This furnished relief. After a continuous journey for six days, on
the seventh they possessed themselves of a country, from which they
expelled the inhabitants, and in which they founded a city and a temple.

Moses, wishing to secure for the future his authority
over the nation, gave them a novel form of worship, opposed to all that is
practiced by other men. Things sacred with us, with them have no sanctity,
while they allow what with us is forbidden. In their holy place they have
consecrated an image of the animal by whose guidance they found deliverance
from their long and thirsty wanderings. They slay the ram, seemingly in
derision of Hammon, and they sacrifice the ox, because the Egyptians
worship it as Apis. They abstain from swine's flesh, in consideration of
what they suffered when they were infected by the leprosy to which this
animal is liable. By their frequent fasts they still bear witness to the
long hunger of former days, and the Jewish bread, made without leaven, is
retained as a memorial of their hurried seizure of corn. We are told that
the rest of the seventh day was adopted, because this day brought with it a
termination of their toils; after a while the charm of indolence beguiled
them into giving up the seventh year also to inaction.

This worship, however introduced, is upheld by its
antiquity; all their other customs, which are at once perverse and
disgusting, owe their strength to their very badness. The most degraded out
of other races, scorning their national beliefs, brought to them their
contributions and presents. This augmented the wealth of the Jews, as also
did the fact, that among themselves they are inflexibly honest and ever
ready to shew compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all
the hatred of enemies. They sit apart at meals, they sleep apart, and
though, as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust, they abstain from
intercourse with foreign women; among themselves nothing is unlawful.
Circumcision was adopted by them as a mark of difference from other men.
Those who come over to their religion adopt the practice, and have this
lesson first instilled into them, to despise all gods, to disown their
country, and set at nought parents, children, and brethren. Still they
provide for the increase of their numbers. It is a crime among them to kill
any newly-born infant. They hold that the souls of all who perish in battle
or by the hands of the executioner are immortal. Hence a passion for
propagating their race and a contempt for death. They are wont to bury
rather than to burn their dead, following in this the Egyptian custom; they
bestow the same care on the dead, and they hold the same belief about the
lower world.

Quite different is their faith about things divine. The
Egyptians worship many animals and images of monstrous form; the Jews have
purely mental conceptions of Deity, as one in essence. They call those
profane who make representations of God in human shape out of perishable
materials. They believe that Being to be supreme and eternal, neither
capable of representation, nor of decay. They therefore do not allow any
images to stand in their cities, much less in their temples. This flattery
is not paid to their kings, nor this honor to our Emperors. From the fact,
however, that their priests used to chant to the music of flutes and
cymbals, and to wear garlands of ivy, and that a golden vine was found in
the temple, some have thought that they worshiped father Liber, the
conqueror of the East, though their institutions do not by any means
harmonize with the theory; for Liber established a festive and cheerful
worship, while the Jewish religion is tasteless and mean.